Pavillon Ledoyen
Ledoyen Review at-a-glance
Awards: Three Michelin stars
+Chef Yannick Alleno is doing things in his kitchen that no one else is trying and doing them at the highest level possible. A reason enough to visit.
+Wonderful historic dining room with more personality than the luxe dining rooms at other Paris three-stars which are tucked into five-star hotels.
-This kind of cooking will always have a miss here or there but I will take the few odd flavor combinations in exchange for a meal that mostly tasted excellent and was always original.
Review Rating: 94/100
Verdict: While the type of food surprised me, I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Ledoyen. Rather than go step by step through the typical french haute cuisine tasting menu, each dish helped convey a clear point of view from the chef. Gone were the classic french sauces reliant on butter and cream. Instead, Chef Yannick Alleno used lighter 'extractions' which involve breaking an ingredient down through some magical combination of sous vide cooking, fermentation, and freezing to extract its essential flavor and juices. This type of innovative cooking invariably had some letdowns but the overall effect was an intellectually challenging meal that also featured many delicious dishes. It is good to see at least one three-star in Paris continue to push boundaries rather than roll out the greatest hits. Bonus points for being served by a front of house team which actually seemed to be passionate about what the kitchen was trying to accomplish rather than just running through a rote description of the ingredients.
Price I paid: €145
Value: 16/20 (lunch menu only)
Ledoyen and Chef Yannick Alleno Background
Pavillion Ledoyen is one of the most historic dining rooms in Paris, housed in a building that dates back to 1779 when it was run as a modest inn by Sieur Desmazure near Place de la Corde. Desmazure eventually rented the building to Antoine-Nicolas Doyen (also known as Ledoyen) in 1791 who converted it to a restaurant and attracted a well-to-do clientele. In 1848 the building was moved to its current location in the Champs-Élysées gardens by the architect in charge of developing the gardens, Jacques Hittorf. With this long history, the restaurant is known to have quite a few famous patrons over the years including Maximilien Robespierre and Napoleon among many others. Given its historical significance, the walls of the building are actually owned by the city of Paris who grants a license to run a restaurant in the building.
Ledoyen’s place among the culinary elite of Paris was cemented under the stewardship of Christian Le Squer who achieved three stars for the restaurant in 2002. Le Squer has since decamped to Le Cinq but the kitchen transitioned to the able hands of Yannick Alleno who was most known as the chef of Le Meurice where he earned three stars of his own. Chef Alleno has proven a worthy successor to Le Sqeur, keeping his three stars at Ledoyen and showing great ambition for the space itself, renovating the kitchen and converting rooms previously reserved for private dining into two separate restaurants - L’Abysse, a sushi counter which has achieved two Michelin stars of his own, and Pavyllon which features refined French food and has one Michelin star.
In addition to an a la carte menu, Ledoyen offers a full tasting menu for €395 at dinner as well as a shorter menu for €280. If these are too rich for your blood and you are looking for a cheaper introduction to Yannick Alleno’s cooking then I highly recommend visiting for lunch when the 4-course menu is only €145. An added bonus of visiting for lunch is you get plenty of natural light and nice views of the Champs-Élysées gardens.
I would be remiss if I did not give the FOH a special call-out - they were really spectacular, excited about what they were doing, and having great knowledge about the dishes as well as the chef’s philosophy. While you will almost always find knowledgeable servers at Michelin star restaurants, I found the servers at Ledoyen a notch above what is standard and it actually improved the enjoyment of the meal, helping you understand and connect with Chef Alleno’s point of view. This was leaps and bound better than the robotic service I had at Epicure and Le Cinq in the two days after my meal at Ledoyen.
Review of what I ate at Ledoyen
The meal started off with an excellent introduction to Chef Alleno’s cooking as it consisted of steamed purple turnip cooked with olive oil and served with a condiment of celery extraction, iodized mayonnaise, and roasted hazelnuts. I would be lying to you if I wasn’t a little bit let down when I saw that the first course was a turnip. That disappointment was misplaced. It takes a skilled chef to elevate a humble ingredient like the turnip and Chef Alleno did just that, coaxing every ounce of flavor possible from the turnip and then smartly pairing it with great condiments.
Also, noteworthy was the bread - I sampled all three and the clear winner was a buttery puff pastry which I happily smeared even more butter on.
Since I was visiting during the winter and it was peak truffle season Ledoyen was offering an a la carte truffle menu which had surprisingly low prices as they were structured more as small plates than full a la care portions. I ordered the langoustine and truffle off this menu which showed why those prices were so low - the langoustine was cooked flawlessly and the accompanying lovage and truffle cream had good flavor but the overall effect was quite barren.
The next course was an impressive bit of technical wonder from the kitchen consisting of gnocchi made from turbot flesh and skin with black trumpet and rams leg mushrooms. While this wasn’t much to look at it certainly was an original dish - the faux gnocchi was actually made out of scraps of turbot and then served in a flavorful sauce featuring a ragout of mushrooms and an extraction of the turbot. This was a more intellectually appealing dish than an exciting one flavor-wise - very interesting but it’s hard to say I enjoyed it more than a nice juicy fillet of turbot. Still, it is good to see the kitchen trying to do something different.
The main seafood course was sole cooked meuinere style with crispy chicken skin, puntarella, and Parmigiano cheese. This was a nice bit of fish although maybe it could have used a bit more precision in the plating to make it look more elevated. Quibbles on presentation aside, the fish had the right firmness, the watercress sauce was bright, and while the wild garlic puree was overpowering by itself it was balanced when eaten with the other components.
Next the kitchen kindly sent an extra course off the truffle menu of black truffle from Périgord, nutmeg flavored poultry cream which was also served with a very interesting turnip which had been preserved in a turnip extraction and marmite. I found this to be much more exciting than the langoustine truffle dish I actually selected, the slice of black truffle on top being at its peak and the poultry cream having a nice deep, rich flavor and featuring very clever use of nutmeg.
Photo courtsey of Ledoyen
The main course was a spectacular ‘milliefiellue’ layering of wagyu beef and mushroom served with lettuce that had been flavored with fermented beef. It is rare you see this kind of quality meat on a cheaper lunch menu. Sadly I ate this course in the kitchen and did not bring my camera to take a picture so I had to borrow a picture from the restaurant. Regardless of where I got the picture from I can’t say enough good things about this dish. The kitchen created a savory milliefiellue by thinly slicing waygu beef and layering it with equally thin slices of mushrooms. This was pressed together and then seared in a pan with the overall effect being tremendous, the glorious flavor of the beef melting in your mouth due to the high-fat content and combining well with the umami of the mushrooms.
Pre-dessert was an elaborate presentation that involved liquid nitrogen, a juice that had been slowly melted from a circular ice cube over the course of the meal, yogurt, orange blossom flavoring, and a bunch of other components I can’t remember. The end result did not look like much but was actually remarkable, having a tremendous combination of textures and flavors.
The main dessert was freshly sliced quince flavored with pollen, herbs, aromatic gels, and kombucha. This was definitely not what you would expect from a French pastry section but very good nonetheless - the thinly sliced quince having a subtle char as well as good flavor and going well the sugar crystallized herbs. This was complex and satisfying.
The meal ended with a handful of further sweet treats including a tart with fresh chocolate truffle shavings on top and a simple bowl of vanilla ice cream which was quite frankly one of the best ice creams I have had as it possessed truly astounding vanilla flavor. Overall this was a very strong showing from the pastry section at Ledoyen with the standouts being the vanilla ice cream and pre-dessert.